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Graham Griddle Cakes
1 cup graham flour 1 cup Gold Medal flour 1 teaspoon sugar 1 teaspoon salt 2 cups milk 1/2 yeast cake Scald the sugar and salt with the milk; when cool dissolve in it the yeast cake. Make a batter with the graham and white flour, beat well and let it rise over night in a cool place. In the morning and 1/4 teaspoon soda, dissolved in 2 tablespoons of milk. Bake as ordinary griddle cakes.
An overnight yeast-raised batter rather than a baking-powder cake, so the work is done the night before and the griddle heat is the only variable left in the morning.
- The missing verb"In the morning and 1/4 teaspoon soda" is a printer's slip for "add." Stir the dissolved soda into the risen batter in the morning; it neutralises the sourness the overnight ferment has produced and gives a final lift.
- Yeast cakeCompressed yeast cakes of the period were commonly 0.6 oz, so half a cake is roughly 1 to 1 1/4 teaspoons of active dry or instant yeast. Cake sizes were not standardised, however, and some were much larger, so treat this as an estimate rather than a conversion.
- Scalding the milkScalding was done to kill wild organisms and deactivate enzymes in raw milk. With pasteurised milk it is unnecessary, though warming the milk still dissolves the sugar and salt. Cool it to about 110F before adding yeast; hotter will kill it.
- Graham flourCoarsely ground whole wheat, including the bran and germ. Modern stone-ground whole wheat flour is the closest substitute; standard fine whole wheat works but gives a smoother, less nubbly cake.
- A cool placeSomewhere cooler than a modern heated kitchen, such as an unheated pantry. In a warm room the batter may over-ferment and taste sharply sour by morning. Refrigerate it if your kitchen runs warm, then let it stand 30 minutes before cooking.
- Batter consistencyTwo cups of milk to two cups of flour gives a thin pouring batter that spreads on its own. Whole wheat absorbs liquid overnight, so expect it to thicken; loosen with a spoonful or two of milk if it no longer pours.
- Griddle heatThe recipe gives none; as modern guidance, around 375F on a griddle thermometer, or a drop of water that skitters rather than sits. A shade cooler than you would use for buttermilk pancakes is a safe starting point, as the fermented batter can colour quickly.
- YieldAbout twelve to fourteen four-inch cakes, enough for four.
Graham flour takes its name from Sylvester Graham, the Presbyterian preacher and dietary reformer of the 1830s who campaigned for unbolted whole wheat against the increasingly white, finely milled flour of the day. By the time this book was printed the term had detached from his movement and simply meant coarse whole wheat, sold beside white flour in every grocery. The recipe's overnight yeast rise is the older method: chemical leavens were common by 1900, but batters set to work overnight appear to have remained common for breakfast cakes in households that baked bread anyway, and the pinch of soda at the end may well be a holdover from the days when the morning batter was reliably sour. That a white-flour miller's promotional cookbook includes a graham recipe at all seems telling; blending the two flours half and half would have kept the branded product in the bowl while satisfying the demand for whole grain.